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February 2009

I discovered Zoë’s music last year via Amanda Palmer (she’s featured on a couple tracks of Amanda’s solo album) and fell instantly head over heels in love. Here, watch & listen:

She does fancy digital loops of her cello and creates this gorgeous, layered one-woman symphony. She should be in Apple ads or something, for all their fusion of music and technology.

Wil has more info on the NPR stuff including quotes from Zoë. I hope it was an honest oversight and that they’ll rectify it, and I hope through the wonder of the internet and word of mouth more people will discover a wonderful musician.

You can buy Zoë Keating’s music on iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, or from her website. I have both the full album and the EP and I listen to them often, they are phenomenal and I highly recommend them for music while writing, painting, or doing whatever artistic endeavor suits your fancy. They’re also brilliant for simply sitting & listening, too.

Maybe I should hurry on up finishing my circus-themed novel, then. Not that it’s a traditional circus, but it probably would fall under the circus chic umbrella. Especially if it is a black & white striped umbrella.

It is so close to ready it is driving me vaguely crazy. I even know what I need to do to get it there, I have a list of notes and edits, it’s just a matter of taking that map in hand and pushing through to the end. I haven’t been in a good headspace for it for a few weeks but I’m feeling better about it, and I am sitting with my notes and my Scrivener documents and I know I can get there.

It’s so much bigger than a painting. I still have trouble switching from artist brain to writer brain while still letting one influence the other, and I think the main disconnect is that I can see the entire canvas at once when I look at it. Looking at a 300 page manuscript is different, it makes it harder to see which sections are underpainted, which are overpainted and which are just fine the way they are.

But I’m getting there, even though it’s been a very long road. Perhaps I should buy some circus chic items on Etsy to keep myself in the circus mood. Or maybe I need popcorn.

We had a very productive weekend. In between movie going and cleaning and making fried rice the boy and I sat down and figured out how to address all the problems in the novel. I now have a list of additions and edits to make and I’m very very happy about it.

It’s a substantial amount of work but most of it is rewriting and I don’t expect to add much more than 5k or so to the total wordcount. 10k is absolute tops, since I want to keep the whole thing under 100k. Some changes are ideas I’m vaguely annoyed at myself for not coming up with earlier, others are bits to add clarification of character or theme or whatnots.

I feel like I have direction with it again, and that makes me happy. I was feeling pretty stagnant and depressed about it for all of January, so this is a welcome change.

Today I am henna-ing my hair and rereading the current version of the manuscript so I can jot down additional notes. Tomorrow I’ll start on actual editing.

And hopefully Tessa will have found a new napping spot by then.

I did make her move after she started closing my tabs and muting my iTunes with her paws, though my typing didn’t seem to bother her. Such a helpful kitten she is.

We went to see Coraline this morning. I have been looking forward to this for ages, I adore the book and I adore Henry Selick so the combination of the two made me downright giddy with anticipation. (I even painted Coraline-inspired art while I was impatiently waiting for the film to be released.)

It is only playing near us in 3D, which I was somewhat concerned about. I have rather wonky eyesight so I don’t always see things in 3D and such all that well. Remember those Magic Eye posters that were all the rage years ago that looked like abstract patterns but had images hidden in them? Never saw a single thing in those, am somewhat convinced that it was a big conspiracy.

But despite mild reservations we decided to give the 3D a whirl and I’m glad we did. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I could see a lot more of it than I’d expected to and it gave everything a glorious depth. I spent most of the film baffled by the artistry of it, the animation is downright amazing. And it’s a testament to the skill of the creators that I kept forgetting that it was all done by hand, the film is that absorbing.

The level of detail is astounding, the Scottie dogs and the mouse circus and each and every button. The characterization, especially of Coraline herself, is wonderful. Have I used enough favorable adjectives for you to tell that I adored it? I kind of did.

It’s definitely a different animal than the book. But I’m rather fond of cases where the book and the film are distinct, separate pieces of art. A book is not a film and a film is not a book, after all, and I think this is a very good example of a film that isn’t exactly like the book in a number of ways but still successful in its own narrative and form.

There are some teensy changes that I wasn’t entirely pleased with, but most of them were minor. Really, I was too mesmerized by the world to be bothered much by passing bits of plot. I loved the aesthetic of it, the feel of the film as a whole too much. I played on coraline.com quite a bit when I got home, just to stay in that world a bit longer.

Highly recommended. And I’d recommend the 3D version, too, it definitely added a dimension to the experience.